Brown Skin + Heavy Coat + Backpack = ?

Op-ed pieces by New York newspaper reporters Paul Sperry, Charles Krauthammer, and Haim Watzman endorsed the practice of using ethnicity, national origin and
religion as primary factors in deciding whom police should regard as
possible terrorists - in other words - racial profiling.

Krauthammer blasted the random-bag-checks program adopted in the New
York subway in response to the London bombings, calling it absurd and
a waste of effort and resources. His answer: Security officials should
concentrate on "young Muslim men of North African, Middle Eastern
and South Asian origin." He argued that authorities should work
backward and "eliminate classes of people who are obviously not
suspects." In the category of the innocent, Krauthammer would
place children younger than 13, people older than 60 and "whole
ethnic populations" starting with "Hispanics, Scandinavians
and East Asians . . . and women," except "perhaps the most
fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing,
knapsack-bearing young women."

Sperry has his own proxy for suspicious characters. He warned security
and subway commuters to be on the lookout for "young men praying
to Allah and smelling of flower water." Keep your eyes open, he
said, for "a shaved head or short haircut" or a recently
shaved beard or moustache. Men who look like that, in his book, are
"the most suspicious train passengers."

Watzman argued that the London police officer who chased down and put
seven bullets into the head of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes without asking him any questions or giving him any warning "did
the right thing." In their heightened state of anxiety, witnesses
reported that Menezes was dressed in a heavy coat and acting
suspiciously - jumping over the ticket gate before bolting from armed
officers toward a train. Police also said that he failed to obey their
instructions. British ITV news, citing closed circuit footage, said
that Menezes was dressed in a denim jacket and walked casually into
Stockwell subway station, stopping to pick up a newspaper before
riding the escalator down and running to board his train.

So while advocates of racial profiling would have authorities subject
men and women of black and brown hues to close scrutiny for criminal
suspicion, the following would pass the Krauthammer/Sperry eyeball
test for terrorists with ease:

• Washington D.C. born-and-raised white male John Walker Lindh, who converted to Islam and was captured in Afghanistan fighting for
the Taliban

• Those "non-Arab, non-South Asians without black or brown
skins" Muslims from Chechnya who've taken down passenger jets, hijacked schools and used female
suicide bombers to kill hundreds and wound thousands in Russia

• The IRA bombers who killed and wounded hundreds; the neo-fascist bombers who killed 80 people and injured nearly 300 in Bologna, Italy; and
the truck bombings in Colombia by Pedro Escobar's gang.

As Colbert I. King wrote in the Washington Post last month:

"What the racial profilers are proposing is insulting, offensive
and - by thought, word and deed, whether intentional or not - racist.
You want estrangement? Start down that road of using ethnicity,
national origin and religion as a basis for police action and there's
going to be a push-back unlike any seen in this country in many
years."

- Info compiled from various internet and print news sources_______________________________________________________

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» I disagree with Hilary Curioush, the images are haunting the text is haunting, they remind us of our fragile existence, the tenacious grip we have on our own destiny in a world gone mad, and this makes them terribly terribly important.........

interesting and kind of agree. But I think John Lindh Walker was fighting an invasion even if it was by his own country, and the chechens are probably more on the recieving end of terror having 250000 of their people killed by russians.

I thought I was only joking because the point of the subway picture is that public transportation in a large cosmopolitan city serves many ethnic/racial peoples and to profile would be to effectively shut it down, but somehow welpen2004's comment seems to make the issue of racial profiling serious, as in maybe we better start doing it.

Is there a cultural divide here, that Americans and Europeans speak in ironic modes but welpen2004 reads the texts as literal?

Well, I read that and that was in ancient times, although many Muslim countries really need to work on their women's rights like crazy not every1 (yes, even in Iran) goes exactly by what the Quran says, and women, for example, in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon have political power, education in college, own businesses, many are doctors, voting rights, etc.Others are not so lucky like Saudi Arabia and destroying of genitals

So police should use no barometer for any profiling what so ever? All people are equally a threat? That amounts to all people are a non-threat, thanks for bombing us today.

Western Societies are full of nice juicy soft targets, at certain places airports, malls, train stations there is a large density of people that make perfect places for attack, if your happy with police searching NO ONE in an effort not to offend/profile(how can you truly have "random searches" then do not bitch when people strike and kill 50, 100, 200plus.

Sorry to say but Islamic radicals do not care about happy go lucky western values and many of them were too strict to live in their own countries so they ironically came to the UK, US, Canada, France.

My guess is your not gonna find a Wahhabi in an Irish bar or wearing a Crown Royal shirt.

I've been all over the world and I am not afraid of Islam or Moslems in anyway, but to say the risk of suicide attack is the same with a 90 year old Irish granny and a 20 something year old Salafalist is not based in reality.Profiling can and does work, and every person here profiles people inside their mind every single day.

Jesse Jackson once said when he is walking down the street late at night and hears two young men approaching from behind him, he is relieved when he sees its two white men. ....

I have thought long and hard about many different fears that govern our modern day lives. It's almost a psychological warfare has overtaken us. We are constantly being pounded with images of war and disaster, created by Governments with hidden agendas, reported to us by mass media houses, whose incentive is to guide minds and steer us like sheep, then to put everything into an even bigger spin, Religion steps in, further fuelling the fire of hatred and mass hysteria on a grand scheme. No wonder we all feel so helpless at times.

Sometimes we have to remember " The greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself ".

Blair and Bush have really sucked us all in to this decade of terrorism.........

Five men have recently been sentenced, in the UK, for plotting to develop a fertiliser bomb and destroy (one of?) several UK targets, including the Ministry of Sound nightclub (this is usually known as the "Fertiliser Bomb" Plot).

Powerful. It is wonderful to have this up.It (in SOME cases, but it is not always true) may be that some terrorists aren't white, but there are many that are.The statements of people to watch (or not watch) are so rascist and prejudiced. They think women aren't capable of eing terrorists, also.Thank you for the truths.I would vote, but I couldn't find the area. Good luck to you!